Chapter Thirty No Wrath Like Mother Nature’s

CHAPTER THIRTY

NO WRATH LIKE MOTHER NATURE’S

“Oh—His Majesty sent another message, Your Highness.” Wan’er raises her tablet to get a better signal as Super-Typhoon Baiyue makes landfall. Rain beats down on my watchtower’s floor-to-ceiling windows, so heavy that nothing is visible through the water, and we have the lights on in the middle of the day.

I look up from my work on the table. So do Taiping, who used her vacation days to come witness the typhoon, and Di Renjie, who’s on standby with me for the Hundun attack expected any moment now. Qieluo is usually with us as well, but she went to prepare for battle at another watchtower with Yang Jian. The White Tiger finally made it to the Han frontier after a very complicated airlift operation from Chang’an.

“What is it this time?” I grumble while returning to the passage I’m copying from the Book of Laborism , double-annotated with Wan’er’s additions alongside her transcriptions of Qin Zheng’s notes.

“His Majesty wants to know if, uh, Your Highness needs the annotations to be further simplified to a seven-year-old’s level.”

“Ignore him.”

“Can we…do that?”

“Don’t worry; it’s on me, not you.”

This time during my deployment, Qin Zheng has developed a habit of sending me annoying messages every day. I’m not responding because I don’t want to encourage him to keep doing it, except that might’ve just made him angrier. At the same time, I don’t feel like expending the energy to talk to him. I have other things to worry about, like how the Iron Widows are being trained. The weirdest part is that since he doesn’t let me touch digital devices and refuses to use one himself, it’s really Yizhi messaging Wan’er. I wish I could see Yizhi’s face as he transcribes Qin Zheng’s increasingly unhinged nonsense.

“But Your Highness, I think His Majesty really wants you to respond.” Wan’er scrolls farther down. “Because here he says, ‘You do realize the capacity to reply is available to you, right?’?” She presses her voice low in imitation of him. “?‘Tell your staffer to relay your words via her device. I did not wake up in a world where instantaneous messaging has been invented just to have you pretend as if my letters have gotten lost in the mail.’?”

She definitely didn’t mean to mock him with her impression, yet I burst out laughing. Taiping raises both brows while sipping from a mug of tea.

Di Renjie frowns. “His Majesty seems—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Renjie,” Taiping mumbles into her mug. “You might get thrown back into jail.”

“I would hope our laws don’t sink further in that direction,” Di Renjie says with full seriousness. “Speaking of such, I am about finished with my proposed amendments to His Majesty’s rewrite of the legal code.” He taps his pad of paper. “We ought to focus more on rehabilitation and prevention than punishment. Studies have shown that harsher sentencing does not reduce crime; improving people’s material conditions does.”

I bite my lips. Di Renjie’s proposals always sound so wonderful, so correct.

And so unrealistic in our circumstances.

Like, I don’t think Qin Fucking Zheng believes in “rehabilitation.” Especially not while fighting a guerilla insurgency. I now understand why he got so annoyed at me for calling him idealistic. Compared to those like Di Renjie, he really isn’t. Di Renjie hopes to get the elites to share their wealth and power by appealing to their humanity. Qin Zheng just breaks their necks, loots their estates, and throws the money and jewels to the mobs outside.

Sometimes, I’m glad Di Renjie missed the mass pardon, because he would absolutely be back behind bars for spray-painting “Great Distorter” over murals of Qin Zheng or writing essays about how “the very concept of a laborist empire makes no ideological sense.”

“I, uh, can’t guarantee our darling Majesty will listen to you,” I say. “But we can send it.”

“How’s the new legal code’s section on restraining orders?” Taiping takes another sip of tea.

“Taiping!” Wan’er screeches under her breath, making a shushing gesture. Then she turns to me. “Your Highness, can I write a more personable response to His Majesty for you?”

“Fine. But don’t sound too deferential, or he’ll know it’s not me.” I pause. “Wait, no, he’ll find out it’s not me eventually if he sees this memory.”

I look around the table, at these people I’ve begun to think of as my companions. Would Qin Zheng be petty enough to punish them for this moment?

“Never mind, I’ll write something.” I beckon to Di Renjie for a piece of paper.

As he rips a page from his notepad, something rams into the watchtower. The building quakes. Windows shatter somewhere below. We cry out, bracing against the table. The lights flicker out.

“What was that?” Taiping glances around the gloomy gray light persisting from the window. Rain shadows whirl over our faces.

I shut my eyes and activate my spirit sense.

There’s a swarm of signatures beneath the watchtower.

“Hunduns!” I bolt up so quickly spots rush into my vision. “Right beneath us!”

“How?” Wan’er gapes. “Shouldn’t the sirens have gone off?”

“I don’t know, but come on!” I wave at Di Renjie and hurry to my deployment pole.

The sliding plates at the pole’s base are harder to budge than usual. Di Renjie kicks them open for me. The instant they give way, the typhoon howls in with a force that blows us backward. I shield my face from splatters of rain. Wan’er and Taiping yelp as papers fly up on the table. Beneath the docking bridge, white-capped waves crash against the watchtower.

The ocean has flooded all the way up to the Great Wall.

I go cold to my fingertips, but I grab the pole with one hand and Di Renjie’s arm with the other so he doesn’t get buffeted back farther. With no armor to weigh him down, he’s more vulnerable than me. His prisoner jumpsuit flaps over his thin frame, molding out his scrawny limbs. Squinting against the wet, roaring wind, we nod at each other. I hang on to his waist and leap into the typhoon.

I used to believe I’d experienced bad storms, ones that kept me up all night as they beat against my family’s house, making us shout to each other about whether the walls would hold.

Since coming to the south during storm season, I’ve realized I am but a sweet northern infant when it comes to weather. These winds, screaming like a mob of demons in my ear, would level my village without suspense. There is no wrath like Mother Nature’s.

I hold on to Di Renjie on our trek across the docking bridge. The Nine-Tailed Fox’s green surface is barely visible through the rain whipping like white sand against my face.

The bridge and watchtower shudder again from a hard pummel from below. I stumble against the bridge railing. Ahead, the Fox teeters.

My stomach drops as a Water-black Hundun climbs with tentacle--like legs over the Fox’s tails, which shield its Dormant Form like a curved cage. It’s a common-class Hundun, about the size of my loft, but to face it in my human body is to face a horror not meant to be comprehended with mortal eyes. It goes against basic instinct to keep moving. Yet there’s no turning around. There is no way to defeat that thing if I don’t get into my Chrysalis, and my Chrysalis is about to topple over .

“Brace yourself!” I yell in Di Renjie’s ear.

I power through to the end of the bridge and, trying not to overthink it, hurl us through a gap between the Fox’s tails.

We collide with the Fox’s head as it falls sideways. On contact, I sense the Fox’s entire contour through my armor. I use the sum of my mental strength to heave it in the other direction, unfurling its tails against the Hunduns scrabbling over it. Not all of them fall off, but enough for the Fox to swing upright again. I compel its spirit metal to cave in beneath me and Di Renjie, dumping us into the cockpit.

We land in a splash, utterly soaked. I roll over in the puddle and wave my arm at the opening I made. The motion helps me mentally seal it up, enclosing us in darkness. The rain hammering like static against the Fox’s metal surface goes muted. I wheeze, my hands and knees aching, and wipe my numb face. Something warm, probably blood, runs from my nose. I don’t dwell on it. Instead I crawl and scamper to my pilot seat. I channel some qì light so Di Renjie can find his way as well, then I help open the zipper on the back of his drenched jumpsuit. Thankfully, he was permitted to keep his spinal brace on outside of battle, so all it takes for him to connect is to lean back in his seat. I fuse my armor firmly to my seat and pull our minds into the Fox.

After my senses balloon into the Fox’s perspective, I shake off the suddenly much smaller-looking Hunduns like a wet animal. They plop and vanish into the floodwaters, which course up to the Fox’s knees. That means the water level is at least three-stories high, deep enough to hide common-class Hunduns beneath its frothy, churning waves.

I propel the Fox into Ascended Form in a burst of white light, craft a scythe, and swing it through the water over and over, pinpointing Hunduns with my spirit sense. Anguish pulses into me with every kill, but there’s no room for hesitation when we’re right against the Great Wall. I don’t know why no sirens alerted me. If any strategists are trying to explain, I wouldn’t know; I can’t hear a thing over the vortex of sound from the winds. I doubt any camera drone could withstand these forces either. Maybe that’s why no warning came.

I reach further with my spirit sense to figure out what’s going on. Off to one side, I mentally trip upon a massive spirit signature, at least Prince class, right against the Wall, amidst an alarming cluster of smaller signatures. I’d assume it’s the White Tiger—but the army never stations Iron Nobles next to each other. My pilot neighbor over there should be common class and off duty.

A bad feeling quavers inside me. I advance in that direction against rain that whirls so wildly it looks more like roiling mist. The torrential floodwaters shudder with the Fox’s every step and drag at its legs. I slice through as many Hunduns as I can without slowing my pace. I stop caring about the ones I miss. The number of them pales in comparison to the growing cluster ahead. I feel something happening there before I see or hear it through the storm: a rhythm of colossal tremors in the ground, independent of the Fox’s footsteps.

I scream out loud once the scene emerges through wind and rain. An Earth-type, Prince-class Hundun moves as one with piles of smaller Hunduns, ramming into the Wall over and over. Cracks spread from a dent in the concrete with every hit. Fire-red and Wood-green qì spark from some of the Hunduns to do more damage.

I slash through the mass of smaller Hunduns and throw the Fox’s weight into the Prince class. It staggers sideways on its six tarantula-like legs before pushing back against me. My scythe snaps in two against the Hundun’s hull. Its front pair of legs clamp around the Fox. It’s like trying to wrestle an enormous golden boulder that strapped itself to me. I wriggle one of the Fox’s arms free and grab another lance from behind me. Channeling Fire qì, I stab the lance into the Hundun. It doesn’t wedge much into the dense Earth-type hull. The larger the Hundun, the more spirit metal to get through to extinguish its spark. As I grapple against it, its golden surface wobbling in my rain-slashed view, I wonder if this is just a fraction of what it’d be like to fight the Yellow Dragon. If so, the Fox would be no match.

Too late, I notice no other Hunduns are pouncing on me when they should be. I turn the Fox’s head. The smaller Hunduns continue to pommel the Wall as a mass, hammering the dent deeper and wider.

Two different impulses tear my mind in opposite directions. I need to keep the Prince Hundun at bay. I also need to scatter the smaller ones. Is there a way to do both at once?

When I swing my lance at the common mass, the Prince Hundun gets the traction to push me backward and return closer to the dent.

Fuck!

I jab the lance into the Prince again. I can’t let it get back to the dent. The Wall can’t take another strong hit. I try to dig the Fox’s heels into the ground, but it’s become slippery muck under the floodwaters. I channel Fire and Metal qì as hard as I can to pierce the lance deeper. If I can kill the Prince—

The next tremor from the Wall feels abruptly different.

I look back just in time to see the common mass smash through the last bit of the dent. Hunduns pour past the Wall on a roar of water, the force of the gush breaking the hole wider.

“No!” I shriek through the Fox’s mouth, the sound swallowed by the typhoon. I lunge for the breach, but now it’s the Prince’s turn to hold me back. Thrashing against its grip, I’m forced to watch more Hunduns stream into the Han province.

When I finally break free, I jam the Fox sideways into the breach, crushing common Hunduns in the process. I cram the Fox’s knees against its chest and collapse its tail lances to fit. It stops the influx of Hunduns, though water keeps surging through the gaps in the Fox’s fetal posture, coming up to its waist.

The Prince barrels toward me, six thick legs shaking the earth and kicking up foam from the floodwaters.

The instant before collision, I raise a lance out of the water. The Prince impales itself on the tip. It’s not much more than a shallow puncture, but I drive spikes out of it like an arrowhead and reinforce it with Earth qì. The Prince can neither pull free to ram at me again nor press forward without piercing itself more deeply.

As we push and tug in our deadlock, cold facts crystallize in the depths of my consciousness. I’ve already failed in my primary battle objective, done the one thing a pilot must never do: I let Hunduns get past the Great Wall. There are no Chrysalises stationed inside to take them down, because every viable unit is used to prevent this from happening.

I can sense the Hunduns that breached the Wall spreading out inside Huaxia. Once they get past the barren grounds near the frontier, they’ll reach farmland. Villages. A mandatory evacuation order has cleared those in the super-typhoon’s path, but there is nothing to stop the Hunduns from going farther, to where people are. It’ll be a bloodbath. The entire Han province might fall like Zhou. And it will be my fault.

I scream while shrugging away smaller Hunduns that squeeze past the Prince to climb toward the Fox’s cockpit. There’s no room to use the Fox’s free hand. One common Hundun crawls past the Fox’s shoulder spikes and saws at the base of its head with sharp Metal-type legs. Pain pierces into me. When my concentration lapses, the Prince pulls free from my lance.

I hurl off the common Hundun and lurch partway out of the breach, preparing for another jostle with the Prince. My best bet out of this mess is to kill it and plug the breach with its husk so I can go chase down the intruders.

Yet, as if it can hear what I’m thinking, the Prince trudges away through the floodwaters, vanishing into the storm.

“Hey!” I cry. “Get back here!”

With the Prince no longer in the way, smaller Hunduns swarm me much more intensely. I slot the Fox tightly into the breach again to keep them from wiggling through.

My lance proves too cumbersome for fending them off. I shed most of its length to form a dagger. It doesn’t fare much better. The blade constantly slips in the water, and for every Hundun I shatter, two more assail me. I consider fusing my remaining lances into a shield to cover the breach, but given that these Hunduns can amass enough force to break the Wall, they could just do the same to push me to the other side. I can’t let them build up like that again.

I drop the dagger and resort to pitching the Hunduns far out, one by one, with the Fox’s claws. At first, I sharpen the claws with Metal qì to pierce their hulls, but the extra killing step takes too much time, and the blowback from so many deaths is unbearable. I’ll legitimately hold out longer by hurling them out with no damage, even if it guarantees an endless loop of them coming back.

“Requesting backup!” I yell into the storm, but I can scarcely hear myself, let alone have hope that a functioning camera drone might pick it up. I think of Qin Zheng conquering six nations only to be taken down by a virus. I don’t know which is a more infuriating way to die, that or this .

As my despair crests to a peak, a large, pale shape appears out of the whipping rain. Not a Hundun—it has antlers.

“Your Highness?” its shout carries faintly on the monstrous winds.

Its female voice startles me. Its antlers come into clearer view, wreathed in blossoms. Red eyes glow in its Metal-white deer form, which almost blends in with the storm.

“Yuhuan?” I exclaim. “Is that you?”

Why is she in battle? She barely just manifested her Chrysalis!

“Yes, Your Highness!” She wades laboriously through the floodwaters in the Plum Blossom Deer, submerged up to its belly. Thin red qì lines trace out floral patterns on its sides.

“Why are you here?” I toss the Hunduns in a different direction, away from her.

“I was following the Hunduns! They all started going—” She halts near the riotous swarm around me. “Oh, no, what happened?”

“They breached the Wall!” I make myself admit. “Did sirens ever go off in your watchtower?”

“Of course. Why?” She lurches away from a bobbling Hundun and swats at it with a razor-sharp hoof.

I almost crush the next Hundun I pick up. The reactionaries . This must be their doing, a deliberate move to sabotage me. If I survive this, I have some choice questions for the Han frontier’s engineers. “Well, mine didn’t! So here we are!”

“ What? ”

“Yeah!”

As more Hunduns besiege her, Yuhuan rears the Deer up on its hind legs. Fire-red light cracks across its body. It transforms into a more humanoid Ascended Form, its front hooves splitting into claws, its torso stretching upright, its antlers elongating, and its legs straightening until its thighs are mostly out of the water. Red highlights bleed in around its individual components, including the blossoms engraved on its sides. Yuhuan studies the Deer’s arms in awe while backing away from the Hunduns. Then she snaps off the Deer’s antlers and wields them like multi-pronged daggers.

“Did any of them get through?” She fights and splashes her way to me.

“Yes!” I hurl a Hundun past her with more force than I intend.

Cursing, she pivots to crouch in front of me like a guard. “What do we do? Shouldn’t we be going after them?”

“I can’t move from here, or more will flood in!”

“Could I take Your Highness’ place so you can go hunt them down?”

An objection rolls to the tip of my metaphorical tongue, but lingers there when I watch how quickly she adapts to battle, skewering floating Hunduns with both antlers in her grasp. She at least got some training before this, while I emerged in my first battle with none at all and managed fine. Why am I doubting her when she’s not doubting herself?

As a Metal type, the Plum Blossom Deer is sturdier for defensive purposes. As a Wood type, the Fox is faster. For what we need to do, it makes sense for us to switch places.

“All right,” I say. “On the count of three, plug the breach. One. Two. Three .”

I jerk the Fox out to the inner grounds. Yuhuan backs the Deer into the breach on its knees. It fits better, its smaller stature less cramped. It moves more freely than the Fox could. I place my faith in her and dash away through the storm.

The flowing water spreads out across the open grounds, no longer tugging at the Fox’s legs. I collapse into its Standard Form to run faster, the howls of the storm shoving at my back and occasionally heaving me sideways. Following my spirit sense, I chase down the breachers one by one, starting with the farthest. It takes a lot of persistence to catch up to them, but they pose no challenge once I do, being mostly common class.

The rain and wind gradually ease in their lashings. By the time I go after the last breaching signature, the worst of the typhoon has passed. I can actually see decently ahead as I pursue the Hundun all the way to a village.

Or what used to be a village.

The scale of the devastation stuns me. Buckled buildings, fallen trees, ruined crops, tangled power lines, snapped planks of wood, scattered sheets of metal, and random roof tiles and other debris everywhere. I’m not sure what was done by the typhoon and what was accomplished by the final Hundun.

I spot the Hundun on top of a pile of rubble. It leaps down when I approach, putting up a valiant but pointless fight. Once I shatter a claw through its hull, the recoil of its dying hatred flows into a flood of relief. I wobble on the Fox’s four legs. I let its head hang low, savoring the peace, the gentler beat of rain against spirit metal.

Then I sense another, much smaller spirit signature in the rubble the Hundun was on. With the Fox’s paw, I nudge aside some concrete pieces.

A shivering little girl looks up at me in the corner of a collapsed cellar, arms huddling her head. Two lifeless bodies lie beside her, crushed to contorted positions, fresh blood seeping through their clothes.

Every thought in my head turns to white noise.